Eileen,
We grew up
together slowly, never
quite the go-getters, better rather
at waiting for the world to come
to us—so, that weekend of your visit
we stunned ourselves by waking
with the sun, walking
miles to the market
ahead of any crowd, and scarfing
breakfast burritos with coffee
on the inlet’s long dock,
then in skinny
red boats we’d rented
rowing all morning
the deep lake
whose claim to fame’s the
inexplicable BOOMS said
to shake the hills
and fill the sky with trouble,
and is for those folks
miles around lucky
enough to hear it,
and vouch this local legend
of the so-called “Seneca Guns,”
their once in a lifetime rousing
brush with mystery, or
if “mystery” embarrasses you,
then whatever hollowing
hunger it was that had us
rapt ’til nightfall, oldest friends
with our oars dry listening
hard at the hushed
lake’s middle,
for the startling report
from the somewhere battle
we had been fighting all
of a sudden our
whole lives, waiting
for this strange artillery
to fire back
Dad,
It’s after Burger King
some Saturday. We’re standing
at the front desk of the downtown Laser Quest
fastening our toy armor and
choosing code-names.
Excited, you say “‘Killer,’
please” but the teenage clerk grimaces
and nixes this, per the fine print
against expressly violent
noms de guerre. It’s a silly rule
for what’s at base
a war game, and you don’t get it:
“How’s about ‘The Assassin,’ then?”
The kid sighs, explains again.
There are words we can’t have
for what we can’t have
been. “I’ll be The Killer Bee”
you say, and now I’m blushing, staring
down, where soon
you’ll thrill to shoot me—
in the flashing plastic
flesh of my heart
Originally from Cleveland, OH and a graduate of Oberlin College and Purdue University’s MFA program, Matthew Kilbane is currently completing a PhD at Cornell University. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gettysburg Review, Jacket2, Scoundrel Time, The Adroit Journal, DIAGRAM, Southern Indiana Review, the Best of the Net Anthology and elsewhere.
*Mary Hope is an artist from Alabama.
